Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XVII, 2015, 3, pp.

78-95

Machiavelli, Fichte, and Clausewitz in the Labyrinth of

German Idealism 1

Peter Paret
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
School of Historical Studies
paret@ias.edu

ABSTRACT
Fichte’s 1807 essay on Machiavelli, written when much of Prussia was occupied by French
troops, and Clausewitz’s lengthy response, based on long acquaintance with Machiavelli’s
works, discuss Machiavelli’s writings as an inspiration and practical guide in helping German
states regain their liberty. As well as their authors’ politics, the two essays reveal their
different views of history – Fichte’s being highly deterministic, as is that of his friend
Johannes von Müller, the historian of the Swiss struggle for freedom; whereas Clausewitz
seeks objectivity in his reading of the past, without which, he has come to believe, he cannot
understand war and its place in history. For Clausewitz, Machiavelli’s writings are of more
than current political significance; they have given valuable support to his growing
recognition of the mutual dependence of war and politics.

KEYWORDS
Fichte, Clausewitz, Johannes von Müller, Historical Objectivity, Interaction of Politics and
War.

1. The French Revolution lent new urgency to the German reception of

Machiavelli’s writings. It was not difficult to find similarities between the
multitude of dynastic, ecclesiastical, and civic entities in Central Europe, now
targets of vast, previously unknown ideological and military energies from
across the Rhine, and early 16th-century Italy, its towns and princes unable to

1With this essay I return to a subject I first discussed in my work Clausewitz and the State,
Oxford – New York, 1976, see especially Chapter 8, section iii, “Fichte, Machiavelli,
Pestalozzi.” In a talk “The Capacity of the Reader determines the Fate of Books”, given at
the Yale University conference “Around Cassirer” on May 7-9, 2015, and not yet published, I
discuss further aspects of the lasting impact of Machiavelli’s work as interpreted by Ernst
Cassirer in chapter 10 of his The Myth of the State, New Haven, 1946.

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 Machiavelli, Fichte, and Clausewitz in the Labyrinth of German Idealism

settle on a common response to foreign threats that soon proved

insurmountable. 2 In the early summer of 1807, after the war begun the previous
year had led to major Prussian defeats and Fichte quit Berlin before it was
occupied by the French, he turned to Machiavelli and his age and wrote an
appraisal of the author’s personality, his ethics, politics, and experiences as
reflected in his writings. The essay could be read as a corrective of mistaken
modern views of Machiavelli, aggravated by Frederick the Great’s Anti-
Machiavel. Actually Fichte’s purpose was to show that the Renaissance author’s
account and advice offered nineteenth-century Germans a way to recover
political autonomy that would eventually lead from ideas to action. 3
Perhaps not uninfluenced by the climactic end of the French Revolution
and the country’s return to internal stability, which provided new force to its
foreign policy, Fichte’s political thought had shifted to value national interests
and energies not only for their own sake – a direction he found to be in accord
with Machiavelli’s ideas - but also for what he saw as the force of the state’s far-
reaching ethical promise. By pursuing its particular interests and expanding its
power in domestic and external affairs, a state, he now claimed, advanced the
well-being of humanity in general – an optimistic view of the eventual,
boundless implications of these changes that Machiavelli would have dismissed
with a shrug. 4 Fichte was identifying burgeoning nationalist sentiments that
were beginning to animate the politically inert populations of central Europe,
and he accepted the intensification these early phases of nationalism brought to
the conflict between states as a necessary step in overcoming local and regional
differences to achieve a better world. For Fichte, so Meinecke sums up this turn
of his ideas, “the nations’ self-generated, individual drives bring about the

2 As an example of the recognition of these similarities, in notes from 1807 and 1808,
Clausewitz compares the political history of the two countries, and characterizes the failure of
German and Italian states to advance from vassals and minor princes to powerful kings as
“political fossilization.“ Carl von Clausewitz, Politische Schriften und Briefe, ed. Hans
Rothfels, Munich, 1922, pp. 55, 56.
3 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Űber Machiavell, als Schriftsteller, und Stellen aus seinen
Schriften,“ Gesamtausgabe: Werke 1806-1807, eds. Reinhard Lauth , Hans Gliwitzky, et al,
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1995, pp. 215-275.
4 In his essay on Machiavelli, ibid., pp. 228-29, Fichte qualifies this assertion by combining it

with a realistic understanding of the growth and decline of city-states: “This is not the place
to demonstrate that while such small republics might well advance matters of temporary
importance, if afterwards they remain independent and want to flourish, they on the whole
contradict the intention of social development and the progress of humanity…[my emphasis, P.]
and will necessarily collapse.”

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general and the supranational.” 5 Fichte’s concept of history as progression to a

universal, beneficent end, supported his proposition that one state’s
accumulation of power leads to justice for all; a visionary joining of two very
different ideals, which, whatever its prospect of becoming reality, could in later
years justify the excesses of nationalism. At the time, Fichte’s assumption raised
his reaction to Prussia’s collapse to a sublime plane above mere hatred of a
foreign power’s aggression and encroachment.
In January 1809, a year-and-a-half after the appearance of “On Machiavelli
as Writer, with Excerpts from his Works”, Clausewitz, whose view of history
differed radically from Fichte’s, responded to the essay with an anonymous
letter.6 The matters raised in this exchange between author and approving but
also critical reader, range from basic issues of political structure and practice to
an odd specific, the weapon-system best suited to meet the demands of modern
war. Fichte’s essay and Clausewitz’s rejoinder have long been recognized as a
document of Machiavelli’s presence in German thought at a time when Germans
reacted with conflicting assumptions and conclusions to the pressures of the
French Revolution and the expansion of French power. In Clausewitz’s life and
work, however, his letter of 1809 was merely a segment of the long maturation
of his ideas that included earlier readings of Machiavelli, a process the episode
with Fichte illuminates, but did not initiate. 7
In the early 1800s as a student in the Berlin Institute in the Military
Sciences, Clausewitz had become familiar with some of Machiavelli’s work. A
few years later, notes he wrote on politics and the conduct of war, among them
references to coalition policies in early 16th-century Italy show him responding
to Machiavelli. In 1803 he reflects on the balance of power, which “had to
develop first in Italy”, mentions Discorsi II and III in his 1804 manuscript on

5 Friedrich Meinecke, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, ed. Hans Herzfeld, Munich, 1962, p.
94.
6 Carl von Clausewitz, “Ein ungenannter Militär an Fichte, als Verfasser des Aufsatzes über

Machiavell,” in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Gesamtausgabe: Briefwechsel, 1806-1810, eds.

Reinhard Lauth, Hans Gliwitzky, et al, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1997, pp. 283 – 89. The text
is also printed in the preface to Fichte’s essay in Gesamtausgabe: Werke 1806-1807, pp. 218-
22. For an English translation, see Carl von Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, eds.
Peter Paret and Daniel Moran, Princeton, 1992, pp. 279-84.
7 My statement in Clausewitz and the State, p. 442, that Clausewitz’s letter to Fichte is among

“the sources of primary importance to the genesis of his ideas,” needs to be corrected. It was
written before I had traced the development of Clausewitz’s ideas, including his far earlier
reading of Machiavelli in the 1790s and the first years of the new century, in sufficient detail.

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strategy, and alludes to Machiavelli’s works in general in a note dated 1805. Two
years later in an extensive note on current military and political events, he refers
often to Machiavelli, who, he writes, can be blamed only “for calling things with
a certain indecency by their true name.” 8 By then Clausewitz had also read The
Prince, and Frederick the Great’s attack on Machiavelli’s political morality, and
now dismissed the monarch’s Anti-Machiavel as resembling that “of a young
academic, who is delighted for the first time to be able to write in the
professorial mode,” an example of the detachment, untainted by patriotic
admiration, which enabled Clausewitz, though a Prussian officer, to engage and
criticize Prussia’s great king. 9 His comments on Machiavelli’s works, together
with reflections and writings in the following years, some linked to Fichte and
his circle, further reveal the impact over time of Machiavelli’s thought on a
creative mind seeking to achieve clarity on the interaction of war and politics.
By the first years of the new century, Clausewitz – then in his early
twenties, but a soldier since his twelfth birthday, and already widely read in
history and theory – concluded that without taking account of the links between
politics and war, he could understand neither the course of history nor the
nature of war. This conviction did not originate in his reading of Machiavelli,
but was confirmed or influenced by the latter’s works among others, as well as
by Clausewitz’s own first attempts at historical narrative and interpretation.
Rather than a crucial episode in the development of Clausewitz’s ideas, his
response to Fichte’s essay confirms and continues what was by then a lengthy
intellectual journey, begun in the 1790s, which eventually led to Clausewitz’s
mature historical studies, and linked to them his theoretical work On War.
In the War of 1806 Clausewitz served as adjutant to Prince August of
Prussia, with whom he was taken prisoner in the retreat after the battle of
Auerstedt, and interned in France, after which he accompanied the prince to
Switzerland before returning to Prussia in November 1807. His absence from
Germany explains the late reply to Fichte’s article, even if a substantial note he
jotted down in the summer of 1807, beginning “No book on earth is more
essential to the politician than Machiavelli’s,” might have been an early

8 Carl von Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, pp. 241-45; Carl von Clausewitz,
Strategie, ed. Eberhard Kessel, Hamburg, 1937, pp. 41-42; Rothfels, Carl von Clausewitz:
Politik und Krieg, pp. 202, 206-10. The implication in the editorial introduction to Fichte’s
essay in Fichte, Werke 1806 – 1807, p. 218, that Clausewitz did not read Machiavelli until
1807- 8 is incorrect.
9 Rothfels, Carl von Clausewitz: Politik und Krieg, pp. 209-10.

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response.10 More likely, the note merely reflected Clausewitz’s by then long-
standing familiarity with Machiavelli’s works. That he did not identify himself
as the letter’s author, which excluded the possibility of Fichte responding, was
an act of necessary caution. With French forces stationed throughout Prussia, a
former adjutant of a Prussian prince, known, moreover, to be close to the man
heading the reorganization of the reduced Prussian army, would have been ill
advised to call attention to himself and his ideas on creating a more effective
entity of state, society, and armed force. It was only a few weeks after he wrote
to Fichte that Clausewitz was appointed Scharnhorst’s principal assistant, a
position that formalized their joint effort to consolidate and modernize Prussia’s
remaining military institutions, and secretly prepare for a new confrontation
with France.

2. Fichte begins his essay with a brief, brilliantly written introduction, calling on
both Horace and Goethe, personifying Roman classicism and German idealism,
as he reflects on various and often unjust ways in which the dead are
remembered. The exchange between author and poets is joined by Machiavelli’s
ghost, who expresses the wish to have his life recalled honestly, a wish Fichte
welcomes: “This request of the sublime shadow we will fulfill. We want to
contribute to the honorable interment of an honest, sensible, and meritorious
man. That and only that is the purpose of the following pages.” 11 His
programmatic statement is only partly true. Fichte’s discussion of Machiavelli’s
life and works will allow him to declare that the Italian’s pragmatism has much
to offer Germans in their present state of political confusion and helplessness.
The masterly, versatile style of the opening paragraphs is maintained
throughout the essay, which lends a vigorous personal tone to Fichte’s historical
reflections and political counsel. In the next section, “The Intellectual and Moral
Character of the Writer Machiavelli,” he introduces him as the supreme realist:
“Machiavelli bases himself wholly on life as it actually is, and we believe writes
better about it than any other… But the more elevated conceptions of man’s life
lie entirely beyond his vision…” The last words, at first sight a damning
judgment, instead lead to a further appreciation of Machiavelli’s pragmatism.
Many writers, Fichte explains, lay down rules for the behavior of a prince,

10Ibid., p. 209.
11 Fichte, “Ueber Machiavell als Schriftsteller, und Stellen aus seinen Schriften,” Werke 1806-
1807, p. 224.

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Machiavelli does so according to different principles. He believes it more useful

to remain in touch with things as they are than reach for their imagined,
idealized forms. How one lives matters more than how one should live, and
abstract ideals can be destructive. Machiavelli thinks, and Fichte agrees, that “a
man who in all circumstances wants to be good, will inevitably be destroyed by
the many who are not good.” 12
The essay’s underlying questions have been broached: what are
Machiavelli’s ideas, and are they of value to Germans at the beginning of the
nineteenth century? Answers cannot be given until Fichte considers major
actions in the writer’s life and his version of political and military events in 16th
century Italy, which, in turn, must be preceded by determining whether past
centuries can be analyzed with enough reliability to provide guidance to the
present. In two paragraphs Fichte combines his appraisal of Machiavelli’s
morality with a disquisition on the difficulty of judging a person who lived in
the past. Machiavelli, he writes, certainly distinguished between right and
wrong ideas and actions. If he did not integrate these values into a
comprehensive moral faith, it was not his fault, but that of the time in which he
lived. “On no account can he be judged according to concepts he does not
possess, and according to a language he does not speak. It is even worse to
evaluate him as though he had wanted to write an abstract work of
constitutional law, and centuries after his death squeeze him into a school that
in life he had no opportunity to attend.”13 In interpreting and learning from the
past, Fichte continues, one must be aware of the distorting effect of intervening
time – a necessary warning, but one not easily followed in a tract that looks to
the past for inspiration and more. Later in the essay, Fichte himself stumbles
over the barrier of time, which at least confirms the danger he warned against.
Machiavelli’s realism, Fichte seems to feel, needs further elucidation.
Referring to The Prince, he explains that the author isn’t advising one to be a
usurper, but is saying simply, “if you are one, or if you gained power by villainy,
then – since we already have you – it is still preferable for us to keep you,
instead of a new usurper or rival who causes new unrest and commits crimes.”
Fichte adds, “to introduce and maintain order and security, particularly in an
unsettled age, is worth everything” – an assertion that may be questioned on

12 Ibid., pp. 224-25.

13 Ibid., p. 226.

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various counts, and finds its justification mainly in his expectation that the
strength of one will eventually lead to blessings for all. 14
Discussions follow on Machiavelli as author and on the character of his
writings, among them that his political views are not guided by Christian
principles, which Fichte again dismisses as a reflection of his age. He considers
him a pagan, “just as popes and cardinals and other capable men of that time
were.” 15 His writings benefitted from the broad freedom of the intellectual and
social elites to write and publish in those years, a freedom authors at the
beginning of the 19th century might envy. 16 This leads to an enumeration and
characterization of Machiavelli’s work, including several paragraphs on his Sette
libri dell’ arte della guerra. Fichte disclaims any understanding of war, but
believes it would be worth having someone of profound knowledge of military
affairs, “who is without prejudice or has the strength to renounce it,” to study
this work once more. 17 It impresses him that at an age when little value was
placed on foot soldiers, Machiavelli demonstrated that infantry constitutes the
core of an army, a view that “since then has become generally accepted, perhaps
not without Machiavelli’s doing.” On the other hand, “today it is the common
belief that artillery is decisive,” and particularly in the French army
“everything depends on artillery,” while “Machiavelli thinks that on the
battlefield [ i.e. on open ground rather than facing castles or fortifications]
cannon are effective only against cowards. A courageous and suitably equipped
army has no need for artillery, and could disdain that of the enemy.”18 It is
worth determining, Fichte suggests, whether on this point, too, Machiavelli has
an important truth to convey. Despite Fichte’s warning that the profound
differences between the Renaissance and the nineteenth century must be kept in
mind when reading Machiavelli, his sense of unchanging human nature allows
him to ignore the technical advances in the design and construction of cannon
over three centuries.
After referring to The Prince and others of Machiavelli’s writings, Fichte
responds to his central question, how and to what extent do Machiavelli’s
politics still apply to our times? Again his answer rests in his conception of the
permanent characteristics of mankind’s feelings and desires. Machiavelli

14 Ibid., p. 226.
15 Ibid., p. 231.
16 Ibid., p. 234.
17 Ibid., p. 235.
18 Ibid., p 236.

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believes, and Fichte agrees, that the state as a coercive institution must
recognize man’s innate malignancy [Bösartigkeit]. 19 The function of the state
Fichte now writes, is “to create at least the appearance of peace,” and to ensure
that the destructive tendencies of human nature do not break into the open. A
ruler must deal both with his people and with other states. His people either
have not yet assented to his rule, or they have come to accept it. “In our age,
especially in the country I address in the first instance, Germany, the second
condition has obtained for centuries, the princes are at peace with their
peoples… so Machiavelli’s teachings on how law is imposed on a resistant
people, do not apply.” But that is not the case with his treatment of relations
between states. On the contrary, events since Machiavelli wrote have only
confirmed his conclusions. 20
The heads of state – Fichte refers only to states of some significance - should
accept two truths: “Your neighbor, unless he regards you as his natural ally,…
is always prepared to grow at your expense.” Moreover, “it is not enough to
defend your actual territory, you have to ensure that your influence does not
wane,” meaning you cannot appear reluctant to resort to war. For maintaining
one’s independence, war and being accustomed to war remain essential.
Fortunately Europeans can acquire the needed military experience in wars
against barbarians in lands beyond Europe. The prince’s duties to his people
make these commonsense recommendations a sacred duty: SALUS ET DECUS
POPULI SUPREMA LEX ESTO. It follows that Machiavelli’s “more serious
and energetic conception of the art of governing needs to be renewed in our
time” - a time Fichte condemns as having been corrupted by the ideas of the last
half of the eighteenth century, which “promoted a certain humanity, liberality,
and popularity as the highest value; pleading above all that people be good…
recommending the golden mean, chaotically blending all opposites - a time… the
enemy of the serious, the consequential, of enthusiasm, of every large thought
and decision, of anything rising slightly above the length and breadth of the
superficial; but especially enamored of eternal peace.” Fichte’s disgust at
everything unthinking and fashionable stokes the violence of his attack on the
late Enlightenment for, in his view, weakening and misleading the peoples and
governments of Europe. He then returns to Machiavelli, and with a final quip
that scoffs at Machiavelli’s bad reputation calls on his fellow Germans to learn

19 Already in his Grundzüge des gegenwärten Zeitalters (1804), Fichte had termed the condition
of man as one of complete sinfulness.
20 Fichte, Werke 1806 – 1807, pp. 239-40.

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from him: “Let therefore someone who is not unknown and not without blemish
[einer der nicht unbekannt ist, und nicht unberüchtigt] rise from the dead, and
show them the right way.” 21
This would appear to be all Fichte has to say; but to strengthen his case, he
adds and comments on excerpts from Machiavelli’s writings. Not until then does
he come to the true end of his essay, three paragraphs headed with the title
Beschluss – he uses the word again at the end of his Addresses to the German
Nation, perhaps because it combines the meanings of finality and decisiveness.
He hopes in this concluding call to action that his words are well received, and,
countering future critics, identifies two kinds of unwanted readers, those who
find that every statement, every argument refers to living individuals, a charge
he denies by characterizing himself, perhaps more fittingly than he knew, as “an
author who remains in generalities,” and, secondly, readers whom facts never
shock, merely the words that identify them. He ends allegorically: “It is said
that the ostrich shuts his eyes to the approaching hunter… as if the danger no
longer seen has vanished. He is not the ostrich’s enemy who calls to him: Open
your eyes, see the hunter comes, run to this side so you may escape him.” 22
Fichte’s energetic, engaged text on Machiavelli celebrates a writer whose
recognition of the political realities of 16th-century Italy enables him, Fichte
believes, to teach early 19th-century Germans the facts of the dangerously
competitive universe in which states exist. A clearer understanding of this
reality should give people the insight to survive, and with their physical and
cultural vigor contribute to the advance of mankind. To propose a Renaissance
writer to perform this educational task is a brilliant choice, and a daring one.
Machiavelli’s distance from the present makes it possible to propose him as
guide to the eternal qualities of statesmanship. But his remoteness also limits
what he can teach.
In the essay Fichte bases his view of government on the malevolent, selfish
character of human nature; yet nowhere does he go beyond urging that
government and people be lawful, enthusiastic, and energetic. The former
admirer of the French Revolution now has nothing to say about the character of
government, the structure of society, the relation between prince and people,
other than that in Germany ruler and ruled know their responsibilities towards
each other, and are at peace. What he asks for is energy and enthusiasm in the
conduct of foreign and domestic affairs. His one specific advice beyond these

21 Ibid., pp. 244-45.

22 Ibid., pp. 273 -75.

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generalizations is a warning that people and governments must not forget how
to wage war, and to note that opportunities for this essential experience may be
found in colonial campaigns. In 1807, Fichte, having been forced to resign his
professorship at Jena, now hoped for a new academic appointment, and had to
avoid antagonizing possible patrons in the Prussian government, might have
been ill-advised to go more deeply into particulars of the distribution of
authority and responsibilities, even had he wished to do so. Nevertheless he was
writing at a time when severe military defeat had shaken even some
conservatives’ faith in post-Frederician absolutism, and efforts were under way
to reform the structure of government and administration, modernize the army,
turn Prussian subjects into citizens by reducing the privileges of favored groups,
and extend and equalize rights and obligations across society. That at this
juncture of the old and the new, Fichte published an essay that dared to defend
a long-dead writer of questionable repute, but dared nothing else, limited the
essay’s reach, not least to Clausewitz. By the time he read the essay, Clausewitz
was fully engaged in the intellectual and political effort of the reform movement,
from making the army more effective – in his lectures at the new War Academy,
for instance, and in serving on the committee drafting a new tactical doctrine for
the infantry – to advocating policies of broad social implications, such as the
introduction of universal conscription, and widening non-nobles’ access to officer
rank. Fichte had written his essay when the shock of defeat was giving way to
the first tentative reforms, Clausewitz answered him when reform was at its
peak.

3. He begins his letter to Fichte – five pages in print compared to the essay’s
fifty pages – by addressing what appears to be a detail, Fichte’s questioning of
the high value attributed to artillery today, a doubt Clausewitz politely rejects,
even as he must have smiled at the learned civilian ignoring centuries of
technological change. Fichte asks for a knowledgeable and objective expert to
review whether Machiavelli’s low opinion of artillery still holds true. Clausewitz
disclaims possessing the desired depth of knowledge, but believes he is free of
prejudice, “the more so since I have seen all the traditional opinions and forms
of military power among which I grew up come apart like rotten timber and
collapse in the swift stream of events.” Today more than ever, he adds, each

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citizen should acquire a sound view of military affairs, and those who seek it
should be in touch with each other – hence his letter. 23
Clausewitz then turns to the issue of artillery: “Like every other weapon,
[it] has certainly been badly employed here and there, mainly by the Prussian
army in 1806, less so by the French, who do not have much artillery judged by
present standards… To overlook artillery entirely would almost certainly have
decided disadvantages; … when guns are concentrated in large numbers it is
impossible to do anything against them. Their effectiveness, since Machiavelli’s
day has probably doubled at least… So much, for now, on the artillery.” 24
He continues with a multitude of comments, and observations that combine
historical and contemporary specifics with proposals of the most activist wing of
the Prussian reformers, beginning with a definition of the current situation: The
German art of war is in decline; a new spirit must revive it. His suggestions how
this may be achieved are combined with a critique of Machiavelli’s use of
history. In many of his works, he writes, he has encountered good judgment and
new ideas on matters of war; but just in his book on war, he misses “the free,
independent judgment that so strongly distinguishes Machiavelli’s political
writings. The ancients’ art of war attracted him too much, not only in its spirit,
but also in all its forms.” He agrees with an opinion by Machiavelli that he had
read in a work of Johannes von Müller, the famous historian of the Swiss and
Fichte’s friend, that in the earlier Middle Ages the art of war was most at home
in societies like the Swiss cantons that without having an extensive literature on
war, developed their way of fighting according to their geographic, social, and
cultural characteristics. But Clausewitz recognizes, as Fichte does not, that in
continuing his analysis Machiavelli fails to rise above the intellectual fashions of
his time: During the Renaissance, Clausewitz writes, when the practice of war
had declined to an uninspired craft, it was easy to go too far in one’s admiration
of the ways Greeks and Romans fought. One should not as Machiavelli did,
recommend a previous, supposedly better way of fighting, nor return to already
developed forms of violence; but try to understand the true nature of war, and
seek to discover what is currently appropriate and effective. For Clausewitz
that means engaging the abilities of each man as fully as possible. “Rather than

23 Clausewitz, Letter to Fichte, Carl von Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, eds.
Peter Paret and Daniel Moran, Princeton, 1992, pp. 280-81.
24 Ibid., p. 281.

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using men like simple automata, the modern art of war should vitalize the
energies in the individual as fully as the nature of its weapons permit.” 25
He criticizes 18th century warfare, which he experienced as an adolescent in
the wars against the French Revolution, for its tendency to turn the military act
into a machine that subordinates moral factors [such as enthusiasm and
patriotism] to mechanical forces, in contrast to wars in antiquity, when it was
generally held that hand-to-hand combat was the best means for animating the
spirit of the individual fighter. Since, he continues, most encounters then led to
close combat, thus making it a common experience, the value of the individual
fighter rested far more in the character of his community and his place in it [in
his bürgerliche Verfassung] than in his manner of fighting, a distinction proved
by the fact that the victorious forces differed from their defeated enemies not in
their tactics but in their social and political condition. Society, politics, and the
armed forces affect each other, in the past as well as in the present. Clausewitz
then leaves antiquity to draw the lesson for his day: to create or improve a
viable condition for the individual’s existence is the task of political action and
of education; the appropriate means of fighting and their use should be
determined by an understanding of war, not by military tradition, which one
must be prepared to change – words that sum up the program of the Prussian
reformers. After this intense mix of history, theory, and politics Clausewitz
concludes with expressions of gratitude to Fichte for “the highest satisfaction
with which your arguments have left me. Their results fully agree with those I
pursued in my quiet reflections.”26

4. Fichte must have welcomed the unknown author’s positive reaction to his
essay, and when reprinting the work in 1810 accepted at least
a part of the correction of his query whether artillery might not be overvalued
in modern war, by erasing his statement that in the French army artillery meant
everything. Beyond that deletion the exchange of views seems to have left no
great impression on him, nor did it on Clausewitz. With its lack of specificity,
Fichte’s essay could have meant little more to Clausewitz than a satisfying sign
of encouragement by a famous scholar, whose activism would have pleased him,
who shared his belief in the superiority of spirit over form, his faith in the
liberating power of education, and his interest in the works of Machiavelli,

25 Ibid., pp. 281-82.

26 Ibid., pp. 283-84.

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whom Clausewitz valued above all for his views on the relations between
political rule and armed force, their constant association as they develop and
function - a matter on which Fichte’s essay offers little but generalizations. New
documents may always emerge, as recent discoveries of Clausewitz letters show;
but in his known correspondence, Clausewitz refers to Fichte’s essay only once,
in a note advising his fiancée to read “Fichte’s essay on Machiavelli, and reflect
on everything that has happened to us.” 27
Machiavelli’s works were a well-known presence in German thought at and
beyond the end of the ancien régime, and as Clausewitz notes in the most polite
terms at the end of his response, Fichte’s essay said nothing new to him. That
Fichte cast his plea for a new form of politics as a vindication of a man whose
name had come to stand for public amorality remains an interesting testimony
of the insight, energy, at times brutality with which Fichte appraised the
political condition of Central Europe after Prussia’s defeats. In the history of
Clausewitz’s thought, his letter to Fichte, while not documenting a shift in a new
direction, does point to some sources of the ideas that gradually moved
Clausewitz away from the great majority of writers on war of his generation, and
enables us to see the early phases of this process more clearly.
Some ten or more years before he wrote to Fichte, Clausewitz had reached a
critical phase in his thinking about war. As a lieutenant with combat experience,
enmeshed in the routine of garrison duty until admitted as a student to the
Berlin Institute, he read the military literature of the day, which offered a
variety of innovative but always dogmatic responses to the changes in war
brought about by the French Revolution. He rejected these attempts to
minimizing the permanent uncertainty of conflict by advocating firm rules in
strategy as well as in tactics, and for ignoring the psychology of the combatants
– an element the significance of which Clausewitz began to discuss even in late
adolescence in notes and in his earliest historical studies. 28 Soon his interest in
the emotions men, from musketeer to commanding general, experience in war,
blended with his belief in the potential of an individual’s mind and spirit, which,
he thought, once fostered and educated could achieve more than any
prearranged pattern of action. Gradually these reflections on how to raise the

27 Clausewitz to Marie von Brühl, January 12, 1809, in Karl und Marie v. Clausewitz, ed. Karl
Linnebach, Berlin, 1916, p. 209.
28 For an extensive discussion of Clausewitz’s early interest in psychology, see Peter Paret,

Clausewitz in his Time, New York-Oxford, 2014, pp. 23-25.

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effectiveness of contemporary military action expanded into something far

larger and more encompassing, an effort to understand war as such.
His growing ambition made the study of history newly important to
Clausewitz. To deepen an understanding of war, to recognize constant elements
beyond its temporary, time-bound features, meant having to combine
knowledge of the present with that of the past, and meeting two further
conditions: the continuous interaction of military and non-military elements
demanded a broader view of the past than one limited to specifically military
events; and, to be useful, that view should not be judgmental, but as far as
possible seek to understand the past on its own terms. Clausewitz began to
respond to this last demand at a remarkably early age. Not yet twenty, he wrote
a long narrative account of the Thirty Years War, which though relying wholly
on printed contemporary and later sources, developed an interpretation that
rejected the accepted Enlightenment view that the war and its inordinate length
were the product of the inadequacies and backwardness of a dark age. 29 The
first half of the 17th century, he wrote, was not inferior to the present; in some
respects it was stronger: prevailing religious and ethical values compelled – and
enabled – men to continue fighting even in situations that in 1800 would be
dismissed as insurmountable. The particularity of each age was further increased
by the fact that the psychology of the leading figures - affected by the times, but
not inevitably captive to it - influenced policy. Clausewitz’s sense that a
comprehensive theory of war demanded factual knowledge and as objective and
balanced a view as possible, was moving him in the general direction that the
pioneers of historicism were then taking. In the early development of the
historical discipline in the 19th century, he is a too often unrecognized
transitional figure. 30
Clausewitz’s historical studies were largely, though never entirely,
interrupted by his duties during the era of reform and the ultimate campaigns
against Napoleon. After peace had returned they became a major occupation
and a key to the major theoretical manuscript he now began to write. 31 More

29 On “Gustavus Adolphus’s Campaigns of 1630-32,” see Paret, Clausewitz and the State, pp.
84-89.
30 On Clausewitz’s concept of historical objectivity, and the relationship between his historical

writings and the work of innovative historians in the 1820s and ‘30s, see also my Introduction
to Part One of Carl von Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, pp. 9-14.
31 Among historical works Clausewitz wrote between 1816 and 1831 are a biography of

Scharnhorst, histories of the campaigns of Frederick the Great, histories of the campaigns of
1796, 1799, 1814, 1815, and the history of the War of 1806, including its political background.

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than once after 1815 he interrupted the development and expansion of his
theories with further historical studies. In the end, historical texts, serving both
as a source of facts and as a control over their theoretical interpretation - were to
fill seven of the ten volumes of his posthumous works.
Clausewitz’s references to Machiavelli in his letter to Fichte and in his notes
and manuscripts, rarely identify the passages that contributed to his enlarged
view of war. But whether Machiavelli writes on matters of organization, tactics,
strategy, or policy, he never strictly separates the military from the political. As
Felix Gilbert notes in his important essay on the role of war in Machiavelli’s
thought: “It hardly goes too far to say that Machiavelli became a political
thinker because he was a military thinker. His view of the military problems of
his time patterned his entire political outlook.” 32 To the young officer, who
began to recognize the importance of these links between matters generally kept
apart, Machiavelli’s texts had to have a powerful impact, whether they first
opened his eyes to this fundamental fact or merely confirmed an earlier
recognition. None of the authors on military affairs Clausewitz read in his
youth, nor subsequently those who wrote on wars of the Revolution and the
Napoleonic era, equaled Machiavelli’s continuous and explicit treatment of the
intense, permanent relationship that linked military, political, and social forces,
interests, and concerns. And as Clausewitz’s letter to Fichte indicates,
Machiavelli remained a presence in his thought and writing.
A further aspect of Machiavelli’s impact on Clausewitz becomes apparent
when Clausewitz’s historical interpretations are compared with those of one of
the important historians of the time, Johannes von Müller, once the official
historiographer of Prussia, whom Clausewitz knew personally from his years as
adjutant of Prince August, and whom he mentions as a source on Machiavelli in
his letter to Fichte. 33 Müller’s European fame derived from his histories of the
Swiss from antiquity to the early modern period, a people he celebrated as
natural, unspoiled, innately warlike in their defense of freedom, which they
gained and preserved against the German and Italian princes and towns that

32 Felix Gilbert, “Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War,” in Makers of Modern
Strategy, ed. Peter Paret, Princeton, 1986, p.11. Note also Machiavelli’s statement in The
Prince, “The best foundations of all states… are good laws and good arms,” and Ernst
Cassirer’s brief discussion of Machiavelli as “the first philosophical advocate of a resolute
militarism,” in The Myth of the State, New Haven, 1946, pp. 149, 161-62.
33 On Clausewitz and Johannes von Müller, see Peter Paret, “From Ideal to Ambiguity:

Johannes von Müller, Clausewitz, and the People in Arms,” now in Peter Paret, Clausewitz in
his Time, pp. 87-99.

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surrounded their mountain strongholds. Müller’s work combines intensive

archival research, ahead of its time in his interest in society and culture, with
the idealization of his subject into a narrative that responded to powerful
concepts and wishes of the late Enlightenment and early Romanticism, not least
those valued by Fichte: the goodness of an unspoiled, simple people, driven by
the concept of freedom, both qualities seemingly delineated in the historical
reality of the early Swiss.
Müller and Fichte were old friends, whose mutual regard surmounted even
major political differences: soon after Fichte called on Machiavelli to help
Germans regain their liberty, Müller entered the service of Jerome Bonaparte as
head of the Department of Education of Napoleon’s new creation, the kingdom
of Westphalia. The two men’s correspondence suggest how their similar
understanding of history supported their friendship. Both saw and wrote history
from a moral perspective, and both exalted “unspoiled” tribal values as a
historical determinant. But Müller, though never losing his belief in the divine
meaning of history, lacked Fichte’s certainty of an inevitable advance towards
universal rationality. And while sharing his friend’s exalted vision of the tribal
values defining the ancient Germans, he could not grasp his sense that these
ancient qualities were now blending into a modern nationalism, which Fichte
expected to envelop and discipline the individual’s shortcomings and selfishness,
humanity’s innate Bösartigkeit, and - even as the new attitudes lead to painful
conflicts - advance humanity towards a better world.
In his work on the Swiss, Müller, by contrast, remained safely in the past.
The historical evidence he idealized according to his ethical demands, was,
however, more complex than he could admit. By the 15th century, the policies of
the Swiss confederation were changing. In the course of freeing itself from
internal feudal constraints and hostile neighbors, the confederation had become
a considerable military power, and was now aggressively expanding, a phase
Müller covers with his usual skill, evidently not recognizing that this
development contradicted his image of idealized fighters for freedom. The rise of
the Swiss mercenary continued to bear out Müller’s belief in the Swiss people’s
warlike nature. But he seems not to have seen or believed that the Swiss pursuit
of conquest and economic gain disproved his basic thesis of ethics driving the
actions of the Confederation.
Clausewitz’s notebooks of 1804 include some pages on the medieval Swiss
based on Müller’s histories. He does not specifically address the idealization of
the Swiss people in arms, an example of the one-dimensional, moral
interpretation he already rejects; but notes that the medieval Swiss were neither

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more nor less warlike than other largely rural societies at the time, and that, like
everyone else, they could be motivated by more than one cause or interest. The
Swiss fighting for freedom in the Alps, also fight for conquest in the Lombard
plains, or serve princes and city states as mercenaries, and Clausewitz gives
examples. 34 Müller’s emphasis on ethical convictions as the formative force in
the history of the Swiss is not repeated in the young Clausewitz’s historical notes
and studies nor subsequently in his theories. Instead Clausewitz seeks to
recognize ambiguous reality. He is at one with Machiavelli in not considering
ethical concepts as the dominant force in history. He regards ethics - whether in
the form of ideas, ideals, or codes - as merely one source of energy – or repression
- among many that are significant, and that both the study of the past and a
theory of war must accommodate.
To be sure, in Fichte’s essay on Machiavelli and in Clausewitz’s response the
study of history plays a subordinate role. Fichte writes to effect change, and
appeals to a figure from the past to help bring it about. Clausewitz agrees that
Germans should regain their freedom, and both cite the evidence of German and
European history in support of their views. But they see the past differently.
Fichte believes in the course of history as the agent and reflection of a grand
design. Clausewitz, no less fascinated by present and past reality, does not
consider history a parable with a given end. In seeking to identify and
comprehend motives and the dynamic by which they become action, he is closer
to Machiavelli than to Fichte, even if he shares Fichte’s wish for the liberation of
Germany , and - in other venues and with other methods – works to bring it
about.
Machiavelli, Fichte, and Clausewitz resort to history to further their
particular interests. They combine past reality, as they see it, with a wished-for
future. Machiavelli uses history to help explain what he has learned in the
service of Florence, and combines these recognitions of the current reality of
Italy’s political fragmentation with an often idealized view of classical
antiquity. Fichte tries to turn history into a weapon for freeing the German
states from French domination. Clausewitz supports Fichte’s political aim, but
views historical understanding, as untainted as possible by ideology or
partisanship, as a precondition for achieving two personal goals – one general,
the other more limited: to exist as a rational, intellectually independent
individual in a complex world, and to reach a deeper theoretical mastery of war.

Carl von Clausewitz, “The Swiss Spirit of the Art of War,” Strategie aus dem Jahr 1804, ed.
34

Eberhard Kessel, Hamburg, 1937, pp, 43-44.

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Objectivity was not one of the principal values of German classicism, and of
the idealism it nurtured and expressed. Far more important to the generation of
1800, this “literary age,” was the recognition in literature and music of aspects
of life that could be explored and celebrated in isolation from their indifferent or
hostile surroundings, or, when in conflict with active and passive antagonists,
traced to a triumphant or tragic conclusion. Kant’s critique of knowledge
proposed solutions to the problems inherent in judging matter external to
oneself. Many readers quickly linked his teachings to ideological purposes, which
distorted their impact; Clausewitz, on the other hand, who in his early twenties
heard lectures on Kant’s teachings, made use of his ideas in finding a firm base
for moving from the pragmatic to the theoretical. We do not know enough of
Clausewitz’s psychological dynamics to define and appraise the role of
objectivity in his life; but it is striking that even in days when he was deeply
worried by the prospect of Napoleon attacking Prussia, he found the emperor’s
intentions rational and comprehensible from the French point of view. 35
However short Clausewitz fell in achieving balanced interpretations in his
historical writings, he regarded the effort to be even-handed as essential in his
life and work. Early on he recognized in Machiavelli a man who, however much
influenced by subjective forces in himself and in his environment, valued the
recognition of facts over doctrine. In Clausewitz’s works and surviving notes,
Machiavelli is among the small number of authors addressing war
comprehensively with whose ideas Clausewitz interacts. His teacher Scharnhorst
and Frederick the Great are others. The integration of war and politics, for
Machiavelli a given, is only the most obvious example of this intellectual
exchange and influence as Clausewitz began to feel his way towards studying
and interpreting the nature of armed conflict. In the end he created a great, if
atypical work of that period of European history. Like the major dramas of
German classicism, but in its own, non-aesthetic realm, On War brings together
historical and permanent elements of its subject, and in combining them
approaches their understanding.

35 See, for example, a note of 1803: “No one can deny a nation to fight for its interests with all
its strength to free itself from slavery – not even France can be criticized if she plants her foot
on our back and extends her realm of frightened vassals to the polar sea.” Carl von
Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, p. 239.

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